Game of the Month

Game of the Month: May 2008

With the juggernaut of Grand Theft Auto IV squeaking in at the end of April, May's game of the month contest was left wide-open. While there were no blockbusters on the level of Rockstar's opus, the month did see a bunch of interestingly quirky originals and ports of games from different platforms. From this pool we had more than enough choices from which to concoct a worthy Game of the Month list, one that won't be quite as easy to predict as last month's. So read on and see what got our nod as the best game of May 2008.

There are expansion packs that just seem thrown together as a quick cash-in while the developer works on their next "real" project. Then there are those rare gems that truly "expand" the game, revisiting what made them great and making the basic gameplay deeper and richer. Dark Avatar, the first expansion for Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II, was one such x-pack. It was so good it ended up as number six on our Overall Top 10 Games of 2007. What makes Twilight of the Arnor so special (and our May 2008 Game of the Month) is that it's managed to do Dark Avatar one better, adding in so much awesome new stuff it's impossible to imagine the game without it.

Twilight of the Arnor picks up directly after the end of Dark Avatar. The universe is still on fire with the Drengin/Korath civil war spinning out of control. Most of the other races of the galaxy, save the humans, are either beaten to exhaustion or are trying to avoid becoming collateral damage in the Drengin's destructive feud. Earth remains safely hidden behind an impenetrable force shield but the price of the Terrans' security is being unable to impact galactic events. Things begin to change when a deep-space Terran Alliance task force discovers the last surviving Arnor, a member of the galaxy's first sentient race, who offers the Terrans and their allies a slim chance to defeat the Korath and their unseen Dread Lord puppet masters.

The major feature that makes Twilight of the Arnor special are the racially unique technology trees. The idea behind them is simple: swapping out the fairly generic tech tree of Dark Avatar and giving each of the game's 12 pre-made races their own upgrade paths as well as race-specific discoveries. This simple idea is a real game-changer, though. What was once a fairly generic upgrade path followed by every race becomes a radically different strategic experience every game. Other toys added to the players' arsenal include a powerful group of easy-to-use editing tools, some great unique planetary buildings, new victory conditions, Terror Stars, and a host of smaller additions and tweaks including a revamped finance screen, a graphical update and much better ways of organizing information. If there ever was a "desert island game," Galactic Civilizations: Twilight of the Arnor is it. Would-be Galactic Overlords shouldn't miss out.